git-mastery

Git Mastery Skill

🛡️ Safety First Protocol

• Never force push to main / master / develop.
• Always use --force-with-lease instead of --force.
• Always create a backup branch before complex operations: git branch backup/feature-xyz-pre-rebase

Advanced Workflows

1. Automated Bug Hunting (Git Bisect)

Find the specific commit that introduced a bug.

# Start
git bisect start
git bisect bad              # Current version is broken
git bisect good <commit-sha> # Version that worked

# Automate with test script
git bisect run pytest tests/test_failing_feature.py

2. Interactive Interactive Rebase

Clean up commit history before merge.

git rebase -i HEAD~n

• squash: Combine commits.
• reword: Fix messages.
• dropped: Remove junk commits.

3. Log Analysis

Visualize branch topology.

git log --graph --oneline --decorate --all

4. Recovery (Reflog)

Recover "lost" commits after a bad reset/rebase.

git reflog
git reset --hard HEAD@{n}

5. Cherry Picking

Pick specific commits from other branches.

git cherry-pick <commit-sha>
# If valid conflict
git add .
git cherry-pick --continue

Commit Message Standard (Conventional Commits)

• feat: New feature
• fix: Bug fix
• docs: Documentation only
• style: Formatting (white-space, etc)
• refactor: Code change that neither fixes a bug nor adds a feature
• perf: Performance improvement
• test: Adding missing tests
• chore: Build process/auxiliary tools

Common Rationalizations

Excuse	Why It's Wrong
"I'll clean up commits later"	Later means never — write clean commits as you go
"Force push is fine on my branch"	Others may have fetched your branch — use --force-with-lease
"One big commit is simpler"	Big commits are impossible to review, bisect, or revert — keep them atomic
"Merge conflicts mean someone else's problem"	Conflicts mean you diverged too long — rebase frequently to stay aligned
"Commit messages don't matter"	Messages are documentation — future you needs to understand why, not just what